Levi Kate
by Sarabibliomania
Summary: I turned the knife back and forth in my hands as the blood chipped off on my fingers and staining them red. Red. Such an odd color for blood.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: For those who have read my Dick Roman story this is from the point of view of the Leviathan who takes on the "shape" of Kate. She was intended to be a very small part but as time went on and her character developed I became more and more excited with her and where her story was going. It contains scenes that take place in between my Dick Roman chapters to fill in some more blanks and then continues from there and after the Dick Roman story ends. So with no further adieu. Enjoy!

I turned the knife back and forth in my hands as the blood chipped off on my fingers and staining them red. Red. Such an odd color for blood.  
"Who was he?"  
My voice sounded loud and echoed in the stone room like I was the only one there and talking to myself. She slowly lifted her head from where she settled against the corner to meet my eyes, the shape to them hollow and pale as was the skin underneath the blood that had twisted into her hair and staining her cheeks.  
"Who?"  
Her voice was quiet and rasped, the work of lack of use and water but maybe underneath that reluctance to answer the question. I couldn't tell.  
"The man. Bobby."  
I stumbled on the name and the memory of the way she had clutched her head and sobbed it over and over like it was a prayer going unanswered. But humans prayed to God. What use did they have to pray to other humans? If that had been what she had done. She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, her chest falling in her breath and I waited for it to rise again.  
"A friend."  
Friend. Not God. Friend. I turned the knife again, the tip of it wedging under my nail and turning. I didn't feel it go into my skin and only noticed from the dotting of black blood on the edge. How strange it must be for her to have her hands wielding the knife that hurt her with the blood of a Leviathan pulsing underneath. No stranger then calling out to a friend though. A friend that was already dead.  
"A good friend?"  
What was the difference? A good friend to one without the distinction. Was there a difference? I hated asking these questions even to myself and I knew that brother would tease me if I pressed them to him. My stupid little sister, he'd say and raise my chin so I could meet his eyes and the coldness in them. To some it might have been an endearment but I heard the hatred underneath it and the thin patience that covered it.  
"What do you care?"  
She swallowed after the question and readjusted her arms over her knees so I could see the bruises down them from the chains that we'd used to suspend her from the ceiling. The individual links were no longer visible but the purpose still remained.  
"I don't."  
I didn't. Or I did. I was curious. And I wanted to know. Friend. Good Friend. Prayer. Sadness. They were words lost from definition and I was left to my own devices to piece them together. Centuries upon centuries in a pit of torment and action and I had forgotten the meaning of words. What they could mean and why people inflicted them on one another. That they hurt and they healed and that they could do both in one stroke. How was that possible? I did not understand.  
"Your son ... what was his name?"  
I was asking again. Making conversation as I called it. Wasting time as Dick would. I wasn't supposed to ask questions. Not to him or anyone else. Questions implied a lack of knowledge and a lack of knowledge implied stupidity which boiled down to a lack of worth. That's what he had told me. And so I had stopped asking questions.  
"Robert."  
She said the name tenderly, cradling it to her chest and barely letting me see it enough to wonder. Robert. It seemed similar to Bobby. Was that intentional? Or had I again made the wrong connection to leave me stranded in understanding. I didn't know.  
"You named him after Bobby?"  
It had to be. It was too similar. Coincidences like that didn't happen – no matter how minor. When God – Our Father – had locked us in Purgatory and a man who called himself a better one had let us out. It hadn't been coincidence. Or that is what Dick said.  
"Yes."  
Quiet. A gentle submission. A tired one. She was tired of fighting, of holding on and not giving up when we had piece by piece taken away what she could grip to. Sam and Dean thought she was dead. Bobby himself was. Her child was gone and her friend – Good Friend? – who had let us out was gone as well. What did she have left?  
"What was he like?"  
I had seen him. Fragments of him in the memories I had gotten when I had touched her cheek and taken on her shape. A future that would no longer happen that had found itself in her worst memory. A child she'd never have killed in a place she would never reach. Small. But strong. He had had her eyes and her smile – uncertain like the reason for it might be gone before it could be formed. But he had looked like his father. Too much. And that's why it hurt her to remember.  
"He was my son. Isn't that enough?"  
That anger was back. That agony. The loss of everything you held dear and being reminded of it over and over. She didn't think I knew that. That I could ever understand. Could I? I had been damned by a father who didn't know me from the one next and had cursed us all to our personal hell because of the mistake of several over thousands. I had been raised by a brother who had loved me once but grew to hate me once I was no longer his shadow. Once I could no longer follow his actions as soon as I had made them. And now I was here.  
"No. It isn't."  
Child. Son. Friend. Good Friend. Father. Names to faces and definitions to all. And then emotions to tie them after. Strings to an idea and cut when they were lost. But they weren't lost. She still held the names and drew pain from them. Why? They were dead. The lesson ended there. But it didn't. And I didn't understand it.  
"We're done for the day."  
I tossed the bloody knife onto the tray of other tools that I had used – the place where Dick had allowed me creativity to inflict pain where I wanted and I had happily agreed. Pain I could understand. Blood I could understand. Even when the pain came with a name as a prayer and the blood ran red instead of black.  
"But you didn't do anything."  
She looked up at me, confused and with no fear that should come with it. I hadn't hurt her today. No twisting of the knife in the stomach or nails screwed to bone. No salt water to the cuts or taunts that she was ours to play with. Not today. Today I was tired.  
"You should rest."  
Stupid thing to say. Rest. Like she could find any in stone and her own blood with the prayers of those she lost muttered on her breath. There was no rest. I did not need rest and I had taken away her chance of it herself. But she had learned to live on that. Little to no sleep where less of it was welcome. Another detail – or fragment I had received from her memory that came when it was useful and was quiet when it wasn't.  
"I'll be back tomorrow."  
A promise. A cold one. Today you rest and tomorrow we start again. Tomorrow I won't be weak or forgiving. I will try to make you scream and I will smile when you do it. Dick will be proud of me and maybe he won't call me names or persist that I was worthless and he should have found a way to damn me below and away from all the rest. Tomorrow I would ask questions and tomorrow she wouldn't answer them. She would bleed and I wouldn't comment on the color and she would prayer and I wouldn't question who to. I nodded as a dismissal and pulled open the heavy door that worked on our strength alone but she could never open. I heard it shut with satisfaction behind me and turned the lock so it spun and clanked the pieces together so she'd know there was no way out. I started to walk down the pristine hallways as one or two of our own passed and barely glanced my way as they did. I froze my steps and stopped, thinking back to my questions and how now they seemed even louder and more persistent when I wasn't present to a force to answer them. I could ask. And she would answer. Through blood or pain she would answer and I would be satisfied. But asking questions meant a lack of knowledge and that meant stupidity and lack of worth. Stupid little sister, he'd say. But he was wrong. I wasn't stupid.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: So ... for those who kept up with my "Dick Roman" story this is the events of what happened before the charity ball they go to. Going from her point of view is filling in some missing pieces of what's going on when Kate isn't there and hopefully making what's going on make more sense. I had some trouble with this chapter at first as I tried to get the sense of the character and while she might seem contradictive at time I hope that it will show how conflicted she feels but what she does and doesn't do and that she isn't just a straightforward character with a basic story line. Anyway here it is and as always enjoy!

I leaned back against the glass of the elevator and tried not to think of the unnatural way it climbed floors without simulating the movement in the box. Not box. Elevator. I nodded to confirm the correction and the replacement to the definition. The red number flashed from a four to a five before a six and stopping in its pace. _That _at least I felt. The double doors opened with a ding and I crossed through them, the small crowd of people waiting outside stepping back to allow me and reforming after I left. Humans. Dick insisted on keeping them around to fill up the ranks. Not that I minded but I found it curious. Working them to their own end and expecting them to smile while we did. It seemed cruel on a subtle level while I tended to go more towards the brashness of knives and blood. Red. It still seemed strange to me.  
"Ms. Roman."  
One of the humans – one with graying hair and an unfortunate tightness around the jaw – nodded to me as I passed and tried for a smile that didn't fit to his jawline. I kept my face blank in acknowledgment and his fell in his own. It was strange how expressive they were but how matched Dick wanted me to be in hiding my own. 'Keep them in the dark, he'd say with that trademark smirk that always made him look cold. Keep them guessing and on their toes. That is how we do things.' That is how he did things and how I meant to obey. The thought tasted bitter on my tongue and I rolled it trying to determinate the emotion and how it had a taste. Hurt? Anger? Regret? I hated not knowing.  
"Ah, the little sister returns."  
I looked up at Dick coming towards me, his suit tailored to perfection and the yellow tone of his tie and cuff links nauseating in the fluorescent light and leaving me with that thought instead of the questionable taste.  
"Richard."  
I nodded with the name and he laughed, his teeth curled under his lip and his Adams apple tightened in his throat with how hollow it sounded. It was odd seeing him in human form. More so then being in one. He had always been just out of the comfort of ordinary and now he had been confined into one. Another taste I couldn't name and one just as bitter.  
"So formal. And even with our lines of familiarity – no matter how I wish I could deny it. Please ... call me Dick."  
He kept on the cold smile and I inwardly questioned how something supposedly so warm could be contradictive into something that made me feel chilled. Another human quality I didn't quite understand.

"Come. There's someone I want you to meet. Someone you actually has a sense of purpose and worth. But you wouldn't know about that would you?"  
He put his hand on my back to gesture me into the office and I breathed through the insult even as it came out tender and confused by his remaining smile and how warmly it should have been intended. But he knew human nature better than I did. The complexities of them and their expressions. The cold smiles, the lies, the degradation ... I understood what I saw and could touch. If it hurt, if it bled, if it screamed ... He knew what they looked like when they didn't scream or they pretended that they didn't hurt. Like with Kate. Maybe even why he liked her. Another thing I didn't quite understand.  
"Charlie Bradbury."  
I turned on the unfamiliar name as a redhead girl I often found watching me walked in with her face going pale and her fingers tightening in the hem of her shirt. Fear. She was afraid and she didn't even know the full extent of why she should be.  
"Dick. Sit."  
He gestured to the chair in front of me and she uneasily cast a glance my way as if I could be a comfort and almost making me smile at the irony. Irony; Noun: an outcome of events to what was, or might have been, expected.  
"Charlie. I've been running things for a while ... feels like since before the dawn of man."  
The corner of my lips twitched at the honesty but I swallowed it back.  
"Always had a vision. I'm close to realizing that dream. I don't want to brag, but the world is my dinner plate. And I don't want anything to jeopardize that – definitely the not actions of one tiny, little person."  
He pressed down hard on each of the last words so they sounded like an insult unto themselves. I repeated the distinction in my head to try and get the feel of it for if – or when – I would use it myself.  
"Sir, sir I can fix this. Please – please don't fire me."  
She stumbled over her words, hands again fidgeting as she tried to explain even as she didn't know what to explain and making the attempt – in my eyes at least – more than a little futile to begin with.  
"What is she talking about?"  
Dick's eyebrows creased in his forehead as he looked at the man who had come in with her who had smiled at me in the highway. He picked up her tactic of stumbling and looking to me for answers that seemed to amuse Dick when he noticed.  
"Don't look to her she doesn't know anything."  
He scoffed at the suggestion that they thought different and I bowed my head to look down at the tiles and running through the steps of suppressing anger that I had found in my research. Step 1: Take a break as soon as you recognize you're angry. Stop what you're doing, get away from whatever is making you angry and take a breather ...  
"Is that about hacking those Super PAC's? Cause _that_ was adorable. Tell me, how does a high – school dropout become one of the brightest minds at Roman, Inc?"  
Still lost in the former moment he had moved on and delivering the compliment as easily as he had done the insult. I didn't understand that either.  
"Um ... honestly ... historically, I've had this problem with authority – no offense – so I realized the only way to get away with being me was to be as indispensible as possible. Sorry."  
Her smile faded as she heard the words and swallowing down adding more so she appeared nervous again even as she detailed her own salvation. But she didn't know that and so thus couldn't be expected to give it its due. Ignorance was bliss. Or so someone, somewhere had once said and not fully understanding what that meant.  
"You're kind of completing me right now, Charlie."  
Dick closed his eyes with that amused smile that still managed to look cold even as it spoke the compliment. It was confusing. How the tone said what the words didn't or vice versa. How you could smile as you threatened someone's life. But only if you took your own pleasure from it. That was easy. That was honest. This wasn't. It was too subtle. A hidden cruelty which to me was much much worse.  
"You have that spark, that thing that makes humans so special. Not everyone has it, you know. Those people – they can be replaced. But people like you ... are impossible to copy."  
He mulled the confliction over in his words as he walked back over to the desk, the question of how people worked and why that had left me in shreds but he had gleaned right through. Was that why he had made me take on Kate's shape? To him was she irreplaceable. I looked down at the hands that were hers and not mine and the scars over her fingers from battles both lost and remembered. Every detail – every piece of her was in me now and playing through my thoughts in memories that I had repeated to her when I was angry or hurt to inflict it on her. Had I replaced her? Was it really that easy? My stomach twisted coldly even as I knew it wasn't and that nothing was easy when it came to him and that nothing I'd done or would ever do would be rewarded in the effort.  
"Take the compliment."  
I started at the words out of place to the conversation and reminding myself to pay attention.  
"This belonged to one Frank Devereaux."  
He picked up the hard drive piece that I had collected for him so I remembered my own memory of his relief at thinking I was alive and Kate's own memory of what it mattered with the overlap of red blood and the screams that gurgled with them.  
"Thought he could bring down the whole company. He was wrong. Let's keep him wrong. It's encrypted or whatever you crazy kids say these days. Break it open and bring it back to me."  
He handed it to her as she turned it over in her hands with the green details on the back catching the light and the gold lines embedded reminding me of the complication of technology and that I hadn't yet begun to piece together even with all my research.  
"Yeah, I'm on it. And – thank you."  
She breathlessly smiled up at him and I found comfort that it was all warmth with nothing sinister hidden underneath it.  
"You're welcome. You have three days or you're fired. Good talk."  
He changed between the tones from warm to cold and back so I found trouble keeping pace until he snapped his fingers at me with the unspoken order that I was to follow. He left and turned out the doorway as I went after him and casting a look back at the red head who still appeared breathless but somehow differently from when she thanked him and making me question how that was.  
"I need you to get Katherine's dress ready for tonight."  
He didn't turn back to look at me as he spoke, his attention on a fraction on me when it was at all as humans based and stepped aside to make uncomfortable way. I jogged slightly to catch up with him and the heels I wasn't yet accustomed to digging tightly into my ankles.  
"Dick?"  
He turned; sighing like it was an effort to speak to me and making me fall to an awkward stop to avoid me running into him. I cleared my throat and brushed back my hair in a method I had picked up may illustrate innocence but that we both knew was a lie for me to suggest.  
"For the charity ball. For the lobsters or otters that they're hosting a dinner for which seems somewhat pointless when they could just serve them for the meal."  
He nodded to several more humans who passed and I watched them go, their pace quickened to get out from under his stare and me trapped always beneath it.  
"You're taking her?"  
Confusion and hurt twisted up into my stomach so I felt like choking and again contemplated the physical strains of emotion and how inconvenient it was that one affected the other.  
"Of course. It's why we stopped your ill performed efforts to make her croak so she could be presentable for public viewing."  
He shook his head at me, disappointed that I hadn't followed his way of thinking and discouraged if even I had found a way to myself.  
"But ... why not me?"  
That bitter taste was back under my tongue as I asked but I swallowed it down as I tried to hold back the other words, the other questions. The desire for his love and appreciation that I was always more than my finger tips from but still I scrambled for.  
"I can be her."  
It was quiet. A surrender I didn't want to make. That it wasn't Kate that was replaceable but me. That I took on shape after shape with lesson after lesson of how to behave and think and obey until I was more those I took on then myself with personality I couldn't remember or grasp lost in between. I had her memories. I had her face, her hands, her body ... I could be her. I could be anyway. Except me. Never me.  
"No."  
He smiled, indulging a small child for what they wanted but couldn't have and more hurtful then if he had been colder from the start. Another confliction. Something else I didn't understand. He reached his fingers underneath my chin to lift my gaze up to his and the coldness behind his eyes that never betrayed anything else. Never love or affection. Respect or concern. Just begrudged bearing and hatred. Pity and disinterest for the little sister he once loved and who he had forgotten how to though she never did.  
"No. No you can't be. You could never be her. She's irreplaceable and you ... you're barely a consolation prize."  
His grinned widened as he bent his head to dip his nose to me in an affectionate touch he had once teased me with when his smile had been warm and when I knew what he thought when thoughts were honest and actions that never contradicted one another.  
"Have it ready for her by six. Maybe at least this you can get right."  
He dropped his hand from my chin and turned to go with that farewell – that insult that I felt under my skin and tearing it up so I was left in her bones with the sense that my identity – my skin – was in shreds all around me.


	3. Chapter 3

She came out of the bathroom, hair wet and dripping down her back before freezing in mid step as she knew that I was there. I took advantage of the pause to look her over and only partially satisfied that I found nothing to note in the observation. Short, skinny, covered with scars and an anti possession tattoo that was pressed intimately into her lower back. I had seen more memories then I could place of Sam and then Dean tracing it and allowing it it's designation of an intimate place.  
"Can I help you?"  
She didn't turn to look at me as she asked, not allowing me the curtsey and something harsh pounding in my head with the recognition that Dick did the same and what it meant when either of them did it: That I wasn't worth the concern and that they wouldn't even allow me the illusion that I did.  
"I brought your dress."  
I nodded at it hanging over the chair though she still didn't look and stretched my legs more comfortably over the arms of my own. Claiming it as my own and that even if it wasn't I wasn't allowing her enough respect to think that she could claim it herself. She was the prisoner here and I was the one enforcing that.  
"And ...?"  
She finally turned to look at me, pulling her bra over her damp arms and not at all fazed by her state of undress as she altered it. It could have been that she suspected everything she had I had already seen but I knew better that she lacked certain patience for body and that if others were going to see it then it wasn't her business to allow them control from that. The detail answered the question for me with memories to back up the claim and I felt torn on discomfort that I knew her so well that her personality was editing out my own.  
"You think you have it all figured out, don't you?"  
I knew she didn't. She never did. She worked with what she had and she manipulated it for survival. Not hers. Almost never hers. Dean, Sam, Castiel, Bobby ... anyone else's life before hers and then hers – if it was a necessity – coming after. But I was angry and anger made you say things you didn't always mean and I let myself into that definition and the assurance of the position I held that was clearly over hers.  
"Have what figured out?"  
She tossed her shirt back and forth between her hands and I took note of the shallow scar on her chest from the bullet that had killed her. The bullet Dick had shot and she had somehow been brought back from. Even she didn't know how. Heaven and then darkness and then buried six feet under. Not exactly six feet. But that was the expression and it slid easily on the tongue.  
"Dick."  
The name clicked coldly on my lips as I tasted it and the confliction that came with. The anger, the hatred, the love and the desire for it returned that was torn between my own memories and others and of a time when he loved me for no other reason than that he simply did and then stopped just as easily.  
"You think you got him wrapped around your finger and that you can break it just as easily?"  
I stood now to gain that height advantage though coming closer remembering it made no difference. Short as she was we were the same height, the same unfortunate detail a reminder in the back of my thoughts with the taunts and teasing she had received for the short coming – pun: noun; the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasise or suggest its different meaning or applications – and how easily she had brushed it off.  
"Now for whatever reason Dick likes you. And for the moment that keeps you safe."  
The words were cold with that bitter taste returned. Regret? Jealousy? That he cared for this insignificant excuse for a human but had forgotten how to for the sister that had been by his side for countless millennia. The taste was dry and I swallowed it down with the unfamiliar workings of my throat muscles and the pained smile I tried to force.  
"But he'll stop. Eventually he always stops ..."  
I couldn't remember when or why ... that just one day I was no longer adored shadow and instead what followed him around like a weight outlining every move he made. That he wanted me to forget – to lose myself in other bodies in other people just so I could forget the fragments of myself as he tore what was left as easily as if it was his practiced skill.  
"And when he does there is a whole line of Leviathan waiting to rip you piece from piece."  
I had heard them. Shared in the fantasy and the confusion of the human in front of me and what made her so special. The efforts she had made to save the world and the failure we had had in bringing her and her loved ones down. The three boys and the old man – Bobby – who I saw in printed color with the warmth of emotion that were too close to individual name but never seemed to fit under just one.  
"And I'm first in line."  
A smile. A cold one. I learned from the best and I felt it just as coldly in my chest and wondered if it had done the same to him. The harshness of the tone, the dead look in the eyes that swallowed down what made humans so easy to read. Emotion, feeling, a hope, a question that they couldn't conceal and that I had trouble portraying myself. It was subtle. I wasn't subtle.  
"Have fun tonight."  
A colder smile, a colder pressure as I nodded at the dress again and turned on my heel to leave. The pressure faded and grew icy as I noted she hadn't moved when I'd spoken that her expression hadn't changed to betray fear or warning or that she'd even heard or acknowledged what I said. All humans feared me. They knew it when they saw me and they were paralyzed by it to even ask why. But she didn't. She didn't fear me. She wasn't scared, she wasn't angry, she didn't care ... I shut the door behind me with a hard pull of the metal and the handle of it crunching in my fist. She didn't care enough to be swayed by my threat and somehow that was more hollow then if she had hated me.


	4. Chapter 4

My fingers danced back and forth over my lips as if trying to press a new shape to them and I dropped them to my lap I tried to wrestle down the thought of how easily they had been changed. How many times I had looked into a mirror to find a different face and only one I knew was not mine. Different eyes, different lips, different memories and then thoughts. Not mine. Never mind. It angered him. When I remembered something or brought to words something that was mine and wasn't shared by anyone else. And now even that wasn't enough.  
"Katherine."  
I rolled the name over my tongue, tasting its shape and nothing bitter or sweet to determine why he said it more than others. She hated that name. Preferred the optional nickname and never the proper term. Kate. Not even Katie. Only Dean called her that. Memory came with it and I could seven years of a love that started from the ashes of nothing to become a fire that burned her inside out and still burned. She loved him. And he loved her. So much. And she didn't understand that. Why he loved her and why anyone would. And she knew he felt the same way. An ironic smile tinged at my lips as a phrase I'd heard once or twice – made for each other – came to mind and now with a definition to fulfill it. He loved her and she doesn't trust it. She loved him and he didn't trust it. I loved Dick and ... I trailed off the thought and whether or not I should complete it. It wasn't honest. Not even in my own head which was supposed to be a sanctuary of your own desires. But not all mine. Hers and others and dozens of others that left their imprint so I wasn't sure if it was my lie or someone else's. I didn't love him. Maybe I never did. I craved him. Craved his respect, his approval, his life ... where others feasted on violence or sex I hungered for him to look me in the eyes – my own eyes and no one else's – and to tell me that he loved me. That he respected me. That he wanted me by his side out of my own skill and not obligation that wore thin. That I was his sister and that I was wanted. That I had a purpose. That I wasn't stupid.  
"I'm not stupid."  
These words were bitter. Caught between a lie and the truth and not sure which I bore. I wasn't stupid. I was stripped to the bone of basic desire but I wasn't stupid. I could peel off a humans flesh with a simple turn of the knife and keep a prisoner screaming for hours without ever losing consciousness. I had memorized the dictionary from A to H and was halfway through I – irate; adjective. Feeling or characterized by great anger. I knew the ins and outs of American politics and was halfway through Canadian. I could speak 500 words in French and 17 in Latin. I wasn't stupid. But it sounded like a lie again – that turn between assurance and doubt that he had placed on me so I didn't know my own thoughts from his words and whether one had started out as mine or his. I turned to look over my shoulder where the clock rested – I could tell time from the 12 hour and 24 clock. Not stupid – and the hands ticking past midnight. He would be back soon. Him and that ... Katherine. The look of her disgust on her face, the inner turmoil of it as he called her it like the name belonged to him before her. I pressed myself to my feet and glanced around the simplistic details that I had placed and feeling proud of each one. A bed by the window so the sun could come in and a wide enough space between the table and foot board so she could still move between them. I had been so proud. The magazines I'd read, the lists that I had researched with each contradicting the other and someone finding a balance between them all. Dick had scoffed when he had seen it and said only that if it was the best that I could do. I had almost cried then. But that was stupid. We didn't cry. I sidestepped between the bed and table before pausing beside it and angling the edge out so it tangled with the chairs. I neatly put them back to their places and stood back to admire it. There was no difference. But it made me feel better that she had less room now. I turned the handle of the door so the touch was cold in my hand and pulled it shut behind me with a loud sound that was heavy enough that she couldn't get through herself. My boots echoed through the empty halls and I closed my eyes to enjoy that silence – that click of my heels that made me feel like the only one in the world and that it was my own domain. It would be lonely though. Loved or hated or ignored as easily as something not even there it would be lonely. Heavy footsteps with hard breathing came over that momentary peace and I opened my eyes to turn the corner and seeing Katherine – Kate running down it. Her dress was torn and her feet bare and covered from head to foot in black blood as she kept her focus behind her as if running from something I couldn't see. Anger hardened in my chest and weighing me as I swung back my arm and caught her square in the chest. She hit the floor hard with a grunt and looked up to see me standing there, arm still raised. I wanted to take the moment to consider why they called it square when she was up on her feet again and flames curling and raging hot down her arm. Oh, yes. The ability to manipulate fire. I had forgotten about that. I tore at her as she dodged out of step and hit me hard in the back. It barely winded me and I swung again and she ducked and dove for my legs. I fell and rolled before she was hitting me again and her arms and mine tangled so I couldn't tell if it was mine that were hitting me or if she'd somehow succeeded it herself. Something sharp sliced along my arm and I jerked back as hot blood ran down my arm to splatter on the floor before the skin stitched itself back together and the spray was the only evidence behind. She had a blade in her hands – a piece of metal sharpened from her room and ragged in her palm. I knew there was a bad word that could have been said but I couldn't remember one and went to attack her again in space of it. She fell back against the wall, her spine cracking the corner of it as her jaw locked and she threw me back. I stumbled on my feet, wondering how this could possibly be an even fight when my own memory reclaimed me that I was used to my victims strung up and bleeding while she had been tortured for years into the skill she had now. It didn't seem fair. But the logic in me could warrant that having a millennia aged creature from another world fighting a twenty seven year old girl wasn't fair either but I had less favor for that thought. I kneed her in the stomach as her head snapped back and her blade snapped at me and catching me in the throat. I fell back and she tackled me so I lay pinned on the floor, wrestling her as she sawed it back and forth over my vocal cords and blood spraying as she did. Panic distantly alerted me that she was going to kill me as logic fought with it that I couldn't be killed. I tried to throw her off but my vision was blurring out the shapes and I distantly heard a snap and a sever of flesh before it occurred to me that it must be my own before all I saw was darkness and then a distant and hollow thud.


	5. Chapter 5

I tapped my fingers along the edge of the table, each imprint of sound making the boy – Kevin – flinch. His mouth was bound as well as his hands but even without the usual indicators of expression I could tell that he was terrified. His breathing was heavy and his eyes were darting to and fro around the room as if looking for an escape even as his shoulders tensed each time my fingers sounded. Fidgeting was supposed to be a sign of fear but I found it as one of boredom – watching the prisoner while Dick attended to more important things. Or at least that is how he explained it, using my recent "brush" with death as an excuse that I wasn't ready for the bigger stage and that he had even been lenient with letting me fetch him in the first place. Stage, fetch ... I was becoming more verse to the American tone of language and finding it less eloquent then I expected.  
"Kevin."  
Dick's voice echoed inside the glass as his footsteps came over the faded repetitions. The step became harder as it passed my chair and I didn't have to look up to know that he was holding back his contempt for me if not expressing it for the brief moment. It was strange how used to something you could become and yet still feel the hurt of it.  
"Dick. I'm very excited to meet you."  
He reached up onto the table to rest his brief case, hitting my boots with the corner of it so I retreated them back and tucked under my chair. Kevin's eyes followed the two movements, separated for a moment in his desire of which to pick before landing on the case again, shoulders tensing as Dick sat down in front of it.  
"You nervous?"  
He didn't wait for an answer or gesture in place of one.  
"Don't be. I'm your biggest fan."  
He contradicted the warmth of the words – lost in the tone – by violently ripping the tape from Kevin's mouth. He bucked forward, held back by his wrists and gasped, the action trembling as he continued to lean forward and Dick took a seat.  
"I brought you a present."  
He leaned over for his brief case, undoing the clips and sliding the inscribed stone in front of Kevin who was still running his lips back and forth in memory of the burn. The stone rocked – pun; also known as paronomasia – back and forth before resting on one side and no difference made that it picked one over the other.  
"What's that say, Kevin?"  
Dick leaned back in his seat, waiting on the obvious answer but the pursing of his lips a subtle hint that he hoped he wouldn't give it so he could pry it from between bloodied lips. Kevin barely glanced at it, eyes settled on a point of the table but no distinction to what of it stole his attention.  
"I don't know."  
The three words took me by surprise and I silently acknowledged the bravery of them knowing that they wouldn't last. Dick grinned, pleased that it had gone his way like it was his idea to encourage the fear.  
"Cute."  
He snapped his fingers at me; the gesture violent by my ear and I managed not to flinch as the chair slid back and I got to my feet. My heels echoed on the stark tile, matching Kevin's breathing; becoming more erratic as I came closer. The thought that he was afraid turned over in my head and I faintly smiled; ignoring that I had found him brave and now I was the one encouraging his fear. Ego; an exaggerated sense of self importance; conceit.  
"Easy there, don't scare the boy."  
Dick's tone was almost teasing as I stopped behind Kevin's chair and out of his line of vision. My inner filed list of torture methods came to mind and I could almost read off what it said. 57. If they can't see it coming then they can't ready themselves. I reached into my boot and sliding out my knife briefly gripped his wrists and cut his binds in one, short action. His whimper cut short as I tossed the plastic onto the table and stood back again, Kevin now sitting up straighter and working feeling back into his hands.  
"You know I checked, Kevin. Number one in your class, winner of the Chad Kennedy Top Young Scientist prize. All that on top of being keeper of the Word – you're a clever young man."  
As he spoke he took a laptop out of his briefcase, pulling up the screen and turning it so it faced Kevin. He visibly swallowed and leaned closer, anticipating what he would find and afraid of what it might be.  
"I'm confident you'll make the right choice here."  
Kevin's eyes followed the Richard Roman logo turning on the background and I was briefly distracted by it as well – blinking rapidly and settling back on Dick.  
"But I see that this is a negotiation."  
He took out an envelope that had been under the laptop and held it up as if it was metaphorical bait which after a private recon more gratuitously was. Bait; transitive verb. To persecute or exasperate with unjust, malicious, or persistent attacks.  
"What is it?"  
I returned my attention as Kevin reluctantly took it from him and turning it between his fingers with a trembling hold.  
"My sources tell me you're applying for Princeton. Letter of recommendation like that from a man like me – Done."  
A smirk tugged at his lips and I found the gesture wrong that I knew it but not on this face. Not his eyes or his nose or his chin or his smile but they are his. Just not his. The thought makes me sad for a moment and nostalgic for a reason that I cannot hold. The sharp return of snapped fingers bring me back and I'm embarrassed that I had been lost in the first place.  
"Live feed up yet?"  
His words are clipped by annoyance and I duck my head, reaching for the remote on the table while turning it to the screen with the instruction manual I've read – 6th of 51 – running through my head. The image of Mrs. Tran comes on grainy and out of focus with her mouth gagged and knife pressed to her throat. His other hand is on her shoulder and I cringe at the amateur gesture of how much more restraining it could have been if he held a knife with his other hand to her spine so she couldn't jerk forwards or backwards.  
"Mom? Mom!"  
Kevin's voice is broken in terror but I hear it in a different name with a more feminine voice and perplexed that grief could so drive a person to cry out with it. I had never loved like that. And I'm quiet as I note I had never been loved like that either.  
"Well, I think this negotiation is concluded."  
Proud of his success, Dick falls back into his seat with a barely suppressed grin that is too cold when he expresses it. Kevin's breathing is heavy again and cut apart by whimpers as he lowers his eyes from the screen while scrunching his eyes shut as if to rid himself of the image. I take pity on his reaction and turn it off as if it never existed.

"I need you to run me an errand."

He's straightening his cuffs as a nervous habit and I look up from where I was watching his footsteps, trying to match them so I stepped in his shadow and not bothered enough to dictate the symbolism.  
"An errand? Can't you get one of your lackey's to do it?"  
I'm whining and I know it but he stops and turns back to face me, his eyes cold and the look of it harsher then when I thought it myself.  
"My 'lackey's' have made better use of their time. You on the other hand follow me like a lost puppy and somehow even manage to mess that up."  
I swallow hard as if to drown the tone, replaying other insults he's delivered me to soften the blow of this one and telling myself that the metaphorical knives don't hurt as much as the real ones. So why am I still bleeding?  
"It's not my fault that she escaped. I died trying to stop her ..."  
He cuts me off by tightening his jaw and I'm ashamed to admit that I flinch.  
"But you came back. Who do you think was more disappointed by that?"  
He smirks; teasing that reaction that on him is too cold and I feel it in my stomach where it burrows and burns. Ice should not burn. Words should not hurt. And I should not want to cry.  
"You couldn't even do that right."  
He adjusts his jacket, snapping his cuffs and straightening his tie as if the words do not even claim his full attention and that I am not even worth the hatred the words suggest. That I am worth less then these alterations and that if I were gone he would adjust more than easily.  
"Negotiations are breaking down with the Vampire Alpha. I want you to go and – smooth things over. Make a day of it. Get some take out. I'm thinking 18 – 45 demographic."  
He chuckles at his own joke, attention to a framed picture on the wall and not even waiting to see if I laughed – assuming I didn't understand. I did. It wasn't funny. He nods, dismissing me and walking off down the hall with a quicker pace to his steps and the suggestion that I shouldn't follow this time. And so I don't.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: The song She Wolf (Falling to Pieces) by David Guetta Ft. Sia is the PERFECT song for Kate and Levi Kate. Enjoy!

I turned the head of the vampire sprawled onto the table, the coldness of the skin almost a shock on my fingers. No pulse, no breath, no eye movement ... I turned the head again just to be sure, the chin hitting on a corner and bruising with the sound. Nothing. I pulled back, wiping my hand on the back of my jeans in second nature recoil that Dick had beaten into me before I had had the chance to warrant an opinion of my own. Vampires were beneath us. Werewolves, Demons, Angels, Humans ... we were first. Everything else comes second. But he had always given me a meaningful look after he said this with the implication that grew louder as I got older: I came first. So you are second. Something angry turned over in my stomach and I looked away from the table suddenly seeing my expression on every face. Except not my face. Hers. I didn't have one. Not anymore. My heels clicked as I stopped in the doorway, hands braced on the frame of it looking for an attack. I could take it if there was one but there was logic in being prepared. I waited – two beats, three – before walking in and raising my eyebrows though no one could see the expression. Pink. Pink wallpaper, pink sheets, pink lamp, pink ... Kate hated the color and now buried in it I could almost see why. Her version of a petty adolescent incident and the femininity of it cringed in my stomach as I made a full turn. The rug was turned back carelessly, a drawer only half closed and a Teddy Bear discarded to the side with its forlorn eyes staring up at me accusatory. I blinked. Toys did not have expression. I stepped over to the dresser to open it and turning through the piles with one lower than the others with the layers folded awkwardly. Someone was here and then left in a hurry. Kate. I grimaced as it clicked and wishing it didn't. Kate was here with Dean and Sam a step ahead of us and to the left. They found someone and left with them but they would be back and I would have to deal with them once they did. My fist tightened around the handle as it crunched and the wood breaking in my palm. I held it up and opened it so the shards were spotted with black blood before re-stitching itself and innocent that it had ever been ruined. I tossed the broken handle onto the bed spread, wiping my hand along the fold of it so it smeared over the pink. Pink: any colour between bluish red (purple) and red. Roughly considered a tint but in most variations lying between red, white and magenta. A noun. Black: a result of an absence of light. Commonly associated with mourning, violence, power and evil. Also a noun. I licked my fingers and rubbed at the cover, trying to blot out how darkly it contrasted. The stain of it spread though and I pulled back feeling childishly frustrated that it hadn't come out.  
"Leviathan."  
The name came coldly from the doorway and I looked back to see a vampire standing in the doorway, features set in mutual disgust and his hands in fists at his side. The arrogance in my wanted to scoff at the pitiful weapon but I swallowed it down and returned the coldness of his smile.  
"Oh, good. You had run out of magazines."  
I folded my arms in front of me: calm, nonchalant. I was not a victim to fear. I was what inspired it.  
"What are you doing here?"  
He forced it between gritted teeth, his fangs overlapping one another and the stains of blood on his jaw and neck. Red blood. Not black.  
"Where's your boss?"  
He was angry. He was afraid. His chest was rising and falling in forced calm breaths and the logic of it fought with what I knew that vampires didn't have breath. They didn't have a pulse. But their blood was red like humans while mine was stained black. The thought of it twisted up under my skin and made me angry for no reason I could understand.  
"Whoring bitch."  
His steps thundered towards me as I caught his fist and felt the bones crunch. A scream caught in his throat as I forced him to his knees, thoughts and images reshaping under my skin so I saw and thought everything he had ever seen or made. An empty alleyway, a girl kicking and screaming, fangs and then blood, blood, and more blood ... boring. Boring. A dark smile, fangs again and that crush of power that took his – my – breath and I was back in my own place at my own feet. Her feet.  
"Thanks, love."  
My nails sank into his neck and I tore so the skin ripped and blood sprayed over my face and dripping down the walls. It was just that easy.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Sorry for how short the last chapter was – and the delay – but hopefully this makes up for it. Enjoy!

The vampire held an arm back to welcome me and I waited a moment after the suggestion to make it on my terms. I could almost taste the metallic hostility from him and held my head higher on it, the Alpha standing across from me with his fingers delicately placed on the ornately set table.  
"Greetings."  
The files of his teeth bared between his lips and I resisted the urge to count them – part curiosity, part self pity to remind myself that despite the color of his blood he was no more human then I was.  
"If I knew you were coming I would have set you out something to eat."  
He folded his arms across his chest and I noticed the pale girl standing behind him, her fingers twisted into her sweater and eyes narrowed in fascination and fear. From process of elimination I assumed the bedroom had belonged to her and wondered whether or not she would question the smeared black stain.  
"But ... before we begin I must ask a formality. It appears we have your original on the grounds and it would do neither of us benefit if you were actually her masquerading for this conversation."  
He smirked at the implication and I bit down hard on my tongue at the ugliness of the word "original." Her eyes, her lips, her thoughts, not mine ... I was only the copy. I choked back the bitterness – the echo of Dick's voice and my own doubts – and shrugged my jacket back over my shoulders to leave my arms bare. I let it drop with a prick of self satisfaction that I didn't give them the courtesy of hanging it up and reached for the rusted blade gripped in the fist of an old suit of armour. Bites of red crusted my hands and I pretended that it was blood – mine or a victims as long as I was the one that spilt it and dictated the amount. I held his gaze as I held the knife over my arm and brought it down hard. Pain broke and screamed up my muscles as my limb from the elbow down hit the floorboards in a sickly squelch of skin and blood. I breathed hard as the sinew and bone stitched itself together again – determined that he wouldn't see me in pain. That he wouldn't see me so weak. I lifted up my arm to show him the final result, flexing each of my fingers so I could see for myself that they were whole.  
"Alright then."  
He nodded, unimpressed and gestured for the chair standing in front of me. I stepped over the stain of my blood rotting into the floor boards and rested the knife beside the delicately printed chin so it contrasted brutally. I didn't sit though. Doing so would make me lower than him and I needed those sparse inches as I remembered everything Dick had told me about vampires in whispered bedtime stories that encouraged my earliest nightmares.  
"I'm dying to know why you're here."  
I smiled at the play on words, turning it sinister on my lips while I outlined the drippings of blood on the table. Human. Red. Kate was here.  
"Monster to Monster let's not lie to each other. I think you already know."  
I raised my eyes to his – challenging him to deny my accusation and the name that I put him to. Monster: Noun; any human or animal grotesquely deviating from the normal shape, behaviour or character. It wasn't the first definition listed but it was my favorite.  
"And how is that?"  
He tilted his head politely, his tone conversational as if he hadn't heard my thinly veiled threat or if he did he wasn't afraid for it. _They're arrogant creatures _Dick had told me, his lips to my hair so I could barely hear him whisper. _They don't know how to be afraid. _And when I'd drawn closer, terrified by this phantom that didn't know what pooled in my stomach and kept me awake, he'd pull me into his lap so I could feel his heartbeat inside his chest and the spaces of it between my fingers. _I'll protect you little sis ...  
_"The Winchesters are here."  
I bit out the name of it – purposefully leaving Kate absent from the address with the taint of the word 'original' ghostly after it. A grin slowly widened on his lips as a chuckle caught and built in his chest as if he was finally understanding an old joke and the humor of it added with age. I waited – feeling like he was teasing me somehow and hating the vulnerability of the suspicion.  
"Would you like the boys?"  
He was indulging me. Showing me the contents of his hand while making sure that there was enough distance between us so I'd have to go closer to see the individual pieces.  
"I'll have them made travel ready for your convenience."  
He balanced back on his ankles, silently gesturing to one of the vampires still waiting at the door and back to me as if trying to catch my expression before I noticed he was looking.  
"How kind."  
I didn't trust him. He was playing with me. One hand in front of him with the pieces laid out and the other closed and hidden behind his back. It is what they don't show you that you should be afraid for I thought, the memory of drawing barbed wire across a victims throat while a rusted blade skewered into their spine. It's what they show you that they want you to see.  
"But before you do – can you tell me why they are here?"  
He rested his hands on the back of his chair, the girl next to him challenging me with the same gaze and faint smirk on her lips that she knew something I did not. She would not be so brave if she stood by herself and the thought grounded me that I was standing alone.  
"They insist that you are exterminating us and that's well – impossible."  
His eyes darted with pleading denial and I held it – watching the turn of his doubts and the memory of those shadows fading from the edges of my childhood. That little girl who was afraid of monsters now standing eye to eye with one.  
"Must be some mistake."  
The laugh of that old joke was softer now – now that he might not have understood it and asking that it be repeated. _I don't need you to protect me, big brother. _I do not need you standing before or beside me. My phantom bleeds.  
"Of course. Dick is a man of his word."  
I could hear the lie even if he couldn't. The little words in my head: _I'll protect you little sister _even as he taught me to scream.  
"And yet he said he'd be in touch. My children are in panic. You don't call; you don't write ... you send your little brat to do all your errands for you ... Where exactly on your list of priorities is fixing our little plague?"  
That hostility I could taste from every vampire in this room turned to ash on my tongue and I swallowed it down dry – struggling to keep my smile. I was not hurt. I was not afraid. I had clawed my way out of purgatory and made legions of men scream through their mouths filled of blood. I was not that little girl. And this was not my bloodless phantom.  
"Nowhere. You poor. Gutless. Spineless. Blood Sucking. Cockroaches."  
My heart thundered in my ears as I stepped closer with each word. With each insult and crushing of that insecurity that buried in my stomach echoing back these names. Pathetic. Worthless. Stupid. Useless. I stopped in front of him, his eyebrows creasing with slowly dawning confusion and slowly laid my hand on his shoulder – putting to rest those shadows and the Little Girl who cried for them.  
"We had a deal!"  
He shoved me back hard so my boots stuttered over the floorboards and rented deep in the wood. I came to a stop several feet from where I stood and felt my blood pound in my veins. An anger and a hatred burning me inside out for the Monster that stood in front of me and the Brother who promised to protect me from them.  
"He said if I kept quiet then I would get my reward."  
He was the one coming closer now; his teeth sharp between his lips as he fought back the control that I could see coming to pieces in his hands.  
"Nothing personal. You've outlived your worth. Be thankful you held on this long."  
I could hear the words ripping to shreds inside my chest; the meaning turned inward that I could as easily be speaking to myself and he might as well not have been standing there.  
"I AM the Son of Eve."  
He tore the words to shreds as he advanced – that anger and hatred I could taste so sickeningly making my skin burn and insides turn hot so all I could see was his face obscured by my own and the ache between my fingers to rip that face – his or mine – to pieces so I could taste the blood for myself and the metallic of it on my tongue.  
"Your mommy was a whore."  
I sang it; taunting the word and the violence bubbling under my skin for the fears and the words that was cutting me open and laying me bare. Worthless. Pathetic. Whore. Little Girl. Little Sister.  
"We came from you!"  
Something hard smashed across my face before I could even see what it was. Bones and teeth splinted through my jaw and sprayed the floor with blood. I could feel the slide of it down my throat as pain popped and sizzled behind my eyelids; the ugly blackness of it hot down my skin.  
"We are your brother!"  
Brother. Dick's hands cupping my face as he smiled at me and told me to be unafraid. Dick's heartbeat soft under my fingers as the sound of it kept away the shadows and the ghosts that I couldn't touch. Dick's smirk as he told me I wasn't worth the flesh shed to cloak me while his fingers traced along my breast. Dick who told me to take her shape her name because he couldn't bear to be reminded that we came from the same skin. Brother.  
I laughed.  
The blood dripped down my jaw as the bones and muscles sewed themselves back into place and I felt the flush up along my neck as my vocal cords stitched into my throat. That echo was gone and that taunt of it missing but I could taste my own blood on my lips and the violence behind it of millennia of self hatred and pity. That Brother that had told me of Monsters. That Monster who had called me Monster. And me frozen between them with the same Title so effortless on my blood stained lips. My bloodless phantom. I was my own monster and my own mortality was rained across the wall paper as my shoulder blade snapped back into place.  
"We are both monsters."  
I straightened so I could look him in the eye – the anger burning behind them and the anger that couldn't touch me. The marbled dish was still cracked in his hand and the black blood dripping down its edge but I was unafraid of it now. He could beat me and he could tear me and peel the flesh from my bones and I would still laugh at him because the Monsters hidden around the corners of my bed were hidden inside of it and had grown with me so they were one and the same.  
"But that does not make you my brother."  
I threw all the weight behind my fist and sent him crashing to the floor with a bone splintering crunch as the girl behind the table screamed and fell back. He crumbled amongst the chairs pulled back from the table and I stepped closer; those shadows that beat around my corners pulling me apart from the inside and laughing as I fell. Footsteps came out behind me and I spun to grab Dean Winchester by the throat just as he had his arm raised and a vial caught between his fingers. Confusion and misguided terror fractured behind his eyes as he stared at me – caught between the face of the woman he'd fallen so brokenly in love with and the Monster who wore that face.  
"Dean Winchester. The Good One. I've been looking forward to meeting you."  
He struggled as my fingers tightened around his collar - no suggestion behind his eyes or between his fingers that he would hurt me. Pity and then hatred divided sharp jealousy that I could tear him to pieces and he wouldn't lift a hand because I wore her face.  
"You're not going to hurt me ..."  
Pain sliced my words short and came on hard with darkness and the intoxicating scent of blood.

I struggled to get my arms up underneath me – a hot fissure crawling up my spine as I blinked everything back into focus. Blood – my blood – was soaked into the floorboards and carpet with the poor shape of my body cut up through it. I gasped against the crunch of my ribs and the faint idea that they'd cut me into pieces to dispose of me and the pitying laugh that it hadn't worked. Monsters couldn't be killed. Footsteps timidly came over the thought and I looked up through my bloodied hair to see the girl from before against the wall and behind the table with her face a white mask of fear. Hunger bit itself through my insides and the memory of the thought that she wouldn't be so brave if she stood alone. Harsh pleasure sank into my bones achingly as she whimpered and huddled back – A Little Girl with no brother to protect her and a Monster at the corner of her bed.


End file.
